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wangwei

85 karma · joined February 5, 2010

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wangwei··on Arrington, Race, and Silicon Valley
I believe Silicon Valley is meritocratic for the most part. I don't buy the minority argument since there are many asian minority presence in the valley. If you look at music industry or sports (such as basketball), you will see many black people. You rarely see any asian people doing sports or music. And we don't blame it on race. If black people are not discriminated in music or sports, I don't know why they would be discriminated in other industries. They succeed in music and sports because they are really good. If black people are really good in tech as they are in sports or music, I can't imagine how the tech industry would turn them away just because of their color.
wangwei··on 23 Year Old Mark Andreessen Explains the Web (29:55)
Great talk!

On a completely different note, maybe different race perceives age differently. But Marc seriously look 43 to me instead of 23 in the video.

wangwei··on Google Calendar Redesign: It's Goddamn Terrible
Not really. For me, the design of the calendar is really ugly (in terms of usability not aesthetics).

I can switch to the old view. But if people don't let Google know that their design sucks, then sooner or later, Google will just shut down the old view.

wangwei··on Making u-Deals work for everyone
I maybe downvoted to hell for speaking against a yc company. But I am going to say it anyway because it's downright wrong.

Now that their dirty practice is out in the open. What do they do?

Oh, It's actually a bug in our software, and we'll fix it.

This is just way too dishonest.

In 2008, when users signed up for loopt, they sms/spam everyone from the address book of users. When people complained about the spam, what do they do?

Oh, there's a bug in our user interface.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loopt#SMS_invitation_issues

If companies like Loopt succeed, it might give people the wrong idea that in order to succeed, you need to adopt sketchy practices like what airbnb and loopt have used. It doesn't matter if it's unethical or even illegal as long as you benefit from it and get away with it.

This is just sad.

Now it might give people the wrong signal that in order to be accepted by pg/YC, you need to be as sketchy/evil as Loopt or Airbnb founders

wangwei··on An open letter to the world - the war on education
College or University education is more than the "education". It's a way of life that people go through to gain some incredible social experiences that you can't get elsewhere. Now I agree that we always need to improve our education, but for the "college is worthless" because it doesn't help your career type, a great college(not a vocational school) is never for your career, it's for personal growth.

On a different note, do people notice that there are more and more teenagers using HN? I feel like HN is the new Myspace again.

wangwei··on The New Information Age
On a different note, the second Techcrunch commenter says

"Reads like a high school essay. Too long. Didn't finish. Boring. Lift your game."

Now this may be true or not. But this is definitely mean and doesn't add any real value to the conversation.

I thought FB comments are supposed to keep out mean people under the assumption that mean attacks (true or not) come from people who hide behind an anonymous name. And they wouldn't do it with real identity.

So the question is what if people will still be mean even with their real identity attached? Does it hurt more if the attack comes from a real person?

wangwei··on Alternate YC Summer 2011 Class - let's do it ourselves
Then, this would disqualify the author of this post because he didn't get an interview.
wangwei··on Getting to Know Americans
Well, you certainly don't sound very open to me. No one expects you to be experts. It's just that some Americans regard America as the central of the universe and never bother to learn about the most basic facts about "the rest of the world".

Many immigrants complain about the ignorance because some americans have ridiculous ,false or outdated stereotypical information about their countries. It's no doubt that America has the most intelligent people in the world but it is also not too hard to find a lot of arrogant and dumb people (maybe including you?).

So just because they are from a mostly poor and illiterate country, and let's say if some americans assume they are hardcore communists if they are from china or they are terrorists if they are from a muslim country or that all indians smell curry, they don't have a right to be disappointed? What does it have to do with their poverty and all?

I know you parents might fight and work very hard to escape their poor nation and come to america in order to give you a good life. Well,you are "American" now and seem to have totally forgotten your root. But at least have some respect. Don't be too arrogant.

wangwei··on Fun - a new programming language for the realtime web
Still, creating a new language just for bindings (across all clients) still doesn't make sense to me. A good javascript library or framework should be good enough.
wangwei··on Ask HN: What Sucks About Facebook?
I do agree with you. But if you view it this way, are't most systems cyclic? companies, economic boom and burst. Even America might fall one day after its peak. The important question is how long the cycle is. Previous social networks have never gained such mainstream adoption and user participation as Facebook have. Facebook might fall one day, but my bet is that it's gonna take longer than you anticipated. Everything is a fashion thing, essentially (even religions).
wangwei··on Choosing New York over San Francisco
If you are trying to do a life style start up, New York is probably a good place. (i don't have anything against life style business). Most of the examples you gave,including the startup you work for are life style business. So sure they would be more practical and making money from day 1. But you're trying to do anything more ambitious, silicon vally is still the place to go.
wangwei··on New York is the greatest... and I don’t care what Antonio Garcia-Martinez says
If you are trying to do a life style start up, New York is probably a good place. (i don't have anything against life style business). But you're trying to do anything more ambitious, silicon vally is still the place to go.
wangwei··on Meditation: Why Bother?
Apparently, you didn't understand the essay or the meditation. Meditation is not nihilism or anti-materialism. I am not sure how i can explain it to you to make it clear to you. I remember from a Buddhist saying that if your glass is full, there is nothing one can do about it. You need to remove something in your glass first before you can pour anything else into it. I feel like you are full of ignorance and false assumptions about meditation. Unless you become openminded and really try to understand what meditation is, nothing is going to change your mind.
wangwei··on Will the real programmers please stand up?
Hello, RethinkDB. You get what you pay for. You don't expect to buy a diamond for 10 bucks , do you?
wangwei··on ASK HN: How do you motivate a lazy co-founder?
It seems like you are acting like a jerk. You're a startup,why act like a big company with these kind of silly rules? It doesn't matter when he comes to work as long as he works the hours and is being productive.

With this attitude, my prediction is that your startup is likely to fail. I just can't imagine any good developers can stand a co-founder who has such kind of bad attitudes and false beliefs about how things should work.

wangwei··on I Almost Got a Job on 37Signals Job Board
Add Akshay Rustagi (posted from Craiglist) to the list of scammers. Their usual trick is skype chat or talk. The best way to identify scammers is to talk face to face.
wangwei··on I might be a complete failure (after 8 years of work)
Even people with very high level math knowledge fails to predict the market (remember the two noble prize scientists who failed?).Since you're out of school when you were 17, I doubt you'll able develop complex schemes (unless you are a very very rare genius).
wangwei··on How can I write an interface like Gmail?
Why is everyone a hacker these days?

BTW, GWT is one option. Some JS libraries such as JQuery is another.

wangwei··on [dead]
Look, udais is spamming HN.
wangwei··on Why we got brilliant engineers for only 2,000$ / year
I think he has a good point. Paul Graham and YC make it seem like creating a successful startup is easier than it may be. In reality, only a few succeed and the majority just fail miserably. But since we only hear success stories, it makes it seem more often than it is.
wangwei··on Ask HN: Who's Hiring?
This is a post for entry level jobs.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1104493